Everywhere I go I see young men in ribbed tank tops, sometimes with unbuttoned shirts on top, but often not. The tank tops can be black, white or gray, but they’re worn with everything — not just as undershirts, as I was taught was correct. What is going on? — Richard, Philadelphia
The tank top may seem basic — just a sleeveless cotton top with a scooped neck — but as a garment, it contains multitudes. It has roots in the working class and the professional class, the military and the farm, men’s wear and women’s wear, sports and Hollywood, gay culture, rap culture, gym culture and indie sleaze.
Which means that everyone who wears one (and everyone who sees someone wearing one) has their own reason and reference point. That in turn means it’s impossible to reduce this particular phenomenon to the status of trend. Even if your neighborhood or TikTok algorithms are serving up a lot of what might be called tank top content.
And it means that while, as you point out, the undershirt has a functional purpose in a wardrobe, as a protective layer between the button-up shirt and the skin, its symbolic purpose may be even more important. Sure, it shows off the body, not to mention the biceps, but it also shows off different value hierarchies. Which may be why you are seeing so many of them.
To understand that, a brief history of the undershirt is in order.
The “marcel undershirt,” as it was originally known, was born in the 1860s when French dockworkers decided to cut the sleeves off their sweaters for relief from the heat. Les Établissements Marcel, a knitwear company, took note and began selling ready-made versions of the style.
Those styles made their way into the American wardrobe in World War I, when U.S. troops in Europe encountered the tank top and realized its potential as a garment to wear under their wool uniforms, and it was officially adopted by the Navy. By World War II, it was a ubiquitous part of military garb.
While the Army was embracing the tank top, so too was the athletic world. Indeed, the “tank” part of tank top is a reference to early-20th-century swimming pools, which were called swimming tanks, and the tank top made its debut as part of the swimming costume of female athletes from Australia, Britain and Sweden in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.
From there, the shirt made its way into the mainstream, imbued with associations of physicality, strength and a certain gritty reality. By the time Marlon Brando and James Dean were plastered all over the silver screen smoldering rebelliously in their white tanks, it had reached iconic status — and its cartoonish masculinity was ripe for subversion and appropriation. (That aspect of the tank top never went away. See Bruce Willis in “Die Hard,” Hugh Jackman in “Wolverine” and Angelina Jolie in “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.”)
Freddie Mercury made the shirt his own in the 1970s and early ’80s, and 50 Cent became known forthe white tank in the early 2000s (and brought it back for his surprise Super Bowl appearance in 2022 in Jay-Z’s celebration of hip-hop and rap). Joe Coscarelli, our culture reporter and a host of “Popcast,” traces its lineage from what he called “Tupac-Snoop-LA gang culture through 50 Cent to modern street rappers like Youngboy, Lil Durk and Young Thug,” from which it “trickled down to [Justin] Bieber.”
And, of course, to fashion, where it went from being problematically called the “wife beater” to being rechristened the “wife pleaser.” “It’s the closest a guy can get to being shirtless without being shirtless,” our men’s wear reporter Jacob Gallagher points out. Whether or not a guy is jacked from the gym.
“It is notable that men with, let’s say, more modest muscles are into this look,” Jacob said. “It shows a certain level of confidence. It’s saying ‘Well, this is my physique, and I’m cool with it.’ And not just your physique, but your body hair, whatever bacne you have, your level of farmer’s tan. It’s wearing the true most elemental article. No sleeves, no collar, no care.”
But lots and lots of semiology.
Your Style Questions, Answered
Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or X. Questions are edited and condensed.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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